Man Tries To Kill Spider But Ends Up Setting Apartment On Fire

As it turns out, “kill it with fire” might not be the best mantra to adopt when dealing with spiders no matter how bad your arachnophobia is. A California man learned this the hard way after he tried to get rid of a wolf spider with a torch lighter but only succeeded in burning down his apartment.

The bizarre incident took place in Redding, where an apartment dweller squared off with a particularly large and ugly wolf spider armed only with a torch lighter, the Record Searchlight reported.

Round one went to the human, who managed to set the creepy crawly ablaze. But round two went to the spider, who scampered onto a nearby mattress and set it on fire in the process. By the time the man was able to extinguish that fire, the flames had already spread to a nearby flag collection and to the drapes on his bedroom window.

Neighbors jumped in and tried to help battle the blaze, possibly because they didn’t want their apartments to get torched as well. Firefighters quickly arrived to the scene to lend their efforts, too. While they were able to stop it from spreading outside of the man’s residence, the fire wound up causing an eye-watering $11,000 in damage.

Lyndsey Wisegarver, a caregiver for one of the men who lives in the apartment, wanted to set the record straight about why a torch lighter was necessary to kill a spider.